


Missing

by Snurvel



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Detroit, F/M, Original Character(s), Post-Season/Series 03, Running Away, Sad with a Happy Ending, eleven centric, social realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snurvel/pseuds/Snurvel
Summary: Life at the Byers household is good. If you are Will, who have become popular in a fancy art school. Or Jonathan, who have found his calling. Or Joyce, who is happy for her sons sake.But for El Byers, her new home is a place of loneliness. She misses the one person that always make her feel like she belongs. She misses Mike Wheeler. How much can she miss him before she decides to stop missing him?
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper
Comments: 42
Kudos: 53





	1. Detroit. A new home.

### Chapter one

Eleven sat on her bed and contemplated. She thought about names. She’d had many names. For a long time, she was simply Eleven, sometimes accompanied by _test subject_ , sometimes shortened into 011. She remembered the pride she felt when she first learned to write her name. It was simple, two straight lines, and it felt good, knowing those lines were hers.

One rainy night, she stumbled into the life and jacket of a boy, a nice boy, and that same night she learnt that you can have more than one name. _I’m Mike, short for Michael I guess…_ he said and asked her name. Tentatively, because she was unsure if she also should have more than one name, maybe it was connected to that friend thing they spoke about?, she gave him hers. And he eased her worries by giving her her second name, _El._ She had outgrown the clothes he’d given her, could no longer sleep in his basement, but that name was still hers, her favourite, because it was Mike’s name for her.

Lucas had called her _freak_. It did not sound nice at all, and she did not miss it when he stopped. On late nights, when sleep would not come and some situation she had understood was awkward but not why would be on repeat in her mind, that was how she berated herself. Freak.

For almost a year she was just _kid._ She was no kid anymore, and there was no one to call her kid left. Her mother never spoke to anyone, she did not know who her father was, Hopper was gone, and Mrs Byers called her _sweetie_ or _girl._

She realised that before she was born, she was _Jane_ , to her mother, maybe even her father. For how long she did not know, maybe they decided on the name the day before she was born, and maybe she was meant to be Jane before she was conceived. Jane was also the name she had offered when her sister asked her. She did not really like Jane, it seemed she was always ripped away from those who would call her Jane. Jane was someone she would never be, not her mother's little girl in the crib nor the avenging punk rocker at her sister's side.

Still, she had a small piece of blue paper that stated that her name was _Jane Hopper_. Hopper had acted like it meant a lot, that piece of paper. It meant that she was someone in the eyes of the government, apparently, and that meant life, a normal life, he said. She was not sure, once she learned that the Department of Energy was a part of the government, she felt she would rather not, never, feel the eye of the government on herself again. Still, Mrs. Byers kept the little blue note stashed securely.

 _New girl_ the kids called her at school, often _quiet new girl_ or, once, _cute new girl_. She was entered as El Byers, El because she chose so herself and Byers because Mrs. Byers said it would save them both a lot of explaining, so the teachers called her _Miss Byers_ or _you._

Maybe, she thought, maybe I am all those people, all those names. Maybe I am Miss Byers in class and the quiet new girl once the bell rings. Or maybe one of them is the real me, but which one? Eleven wished she had someone to discuss this with, to talk about this and other matters that plagued her mind. El missed Mike. Mike knew. And when he sometimes did not, he just smiled his soft smile and said “let’s figure it out, together”. Mike explained. Mike made her feel good, whether it was with the words that came out of his mouth or when his mouth kissed hers.

But Mike lived in Hawkins, Indiana, and the quiet Miss Byers went to high school in Detroit, because that’s where Mrs. Byers took her boys and her girl when she decided that Hawkins was no longer the place for them. El had no idea how to drive a car, and even if she had that, and a car, Hawkins was four and a half hour away. So, El missed Mike.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joyce Byers knew she was not a successful woman. In fact, she could with ease count ten failures for each success in her life. Her high school sweetheart went to join a war in a far off jungle rather than stay with her, and even though she managed to find Lonnie in his stead, their marriage had been a spectacular failure.

The kids that marriage had blessed her with were both outcasts. Jonathan had not brought a friend home since first grade, and even if it was every mother’s dream to be her son’s best friend, it wasn’t supposed to be because she was his only friend. Will fared little better, even if he had friends, three great friends. He was bullied, both physically and verbally, and the only subject he really excelled at was art whereas his friends were more into science and technology.

She herself really did not have any friends left, the grown-ups she used to speak to were her boss at work and the mothers of Will's friends. And those interactions never failed to remind her of her other shortcomings. She could not cook, bake or keep a tidy home, like Mrs. Wheeler could, and she could not bring home a decent pay check like Mrs. Sinclair did, or manage to engage herself in the hobbies of her son like Mrs. Henderson did. God, she even though of them as grown-ups and used Will's names for them. Come to think of it, she hadn’t really spoken to any of them since she left Hawkins.

And every morning, she pushed herself out of bed and wished she had not quit smoking. There was talk about cigarettes being bad for your health, outright killing you, but long since having realised that she could never really afford to retire, Joyce sometimes thought that a few years less might not be all bad. But smoke made Will cough, and she couldn’t really afford the damn things anyway. She settled for missing a smoke.

To top it off, there was that new feeling of having sold out cheap. When Dr. Owens had approached her and suggested that relocating from Hawkins might be a good idea, he had also been very clear about the fact that the DoE wished to keep a lid on things, **all** things related to the lab in Hawkins. Joyce had never seen truth as a ware to be peddled before, but she realised that this what Owens was after. Money for her silence. She had asked for what she considered a very large sum of money, the equivalent of two years’ worth of pay, and the DoE lawyers had shared a quick look, written the sum into the NDA and given it to her to sign. No attempt at negotiations, no worried looks. Just a check written out in a matter of minutes. She could not shake the feeling that she could have had ten times the amount she asked for.

Still, the money was enough to buy a house in Detroit, where houses were cheap. Detroit was a big city where no one asked questions. And it was very close to the border, just in case someone came looking for the girl she had taken in.

And she had found a great school for Will, a place where he could dedicate himself to his big passion, drawing. She could never have afforded the fees, but the school took a few students free of charge each year, chosen by the quality of their work. It was one of the proudest days of Joyce’s life when she learned that Will was one of the select few. It was a 45 minute drive to drop him off and then again pick him up, but it was an hour and a half each day she gladly spent in the car with Will. Thank God though that El could walk to school or Joyce would never be on time for work.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pearl Odemwingie considered the girl in front of her. Classic abuse case. But of what kind? There was something in the girl that Pearl had not seen before. Working schools in the poorer parts of Detroit, she thought she’d seen it all by now. The kids born to drug addicts, the kids born to be drug addicts, the kids born as drug addicts. The beaten ones, the neglected ones, the abused ones. Those without friends, those without family, those without a home. She’d seen them all and knew the signs. But this girl? The signs she gave off were like nothing Pearl had ever come across before. Maybe that Indian girl a few years back…?

Pearl let her thoughts on earlier cases drop and refocused on the thin sliver of a girl in front of her. El Byers. She couldn’t really place her. She found it so much easier to reach the children when she knew what their background was. But this girl. Not the beaten kind (she had tried raising her arm sharply and the girl didn’t flinch), not sexually abused (she did not shy away from touch nor give in to it too much), no signs of addiction. She seemed to expect to be watched all the time, so probably not ignored and neglected. She must have fended for herself a lot, as she expected nothing from others, but at the same time she was as far from street smart as Pearl had ever seen. A conundrum, Pearl thought.

The woman who had dropped her off the first day was obviously not her mother, but there seemed to be a connection between them, a positive one. So at least there was a home and a caring adult.

“So, Miss Byers”, Pearl said, “I thought we might discuss how your first month with us have been”.

El looked up at the woman in front of her, and did not speak. Miss Odemwingie was enormous, the largest person El had ever seen. Her presence rivalled her appearance, it was as if hundreds of pounds demanded an answer, and still El had no idea what to say. She went here every day. She sat down in class. Took as many notes as she had the time to (her hand ached from all the writing she did). Ate her sandwich for lunch. Walked back home.

“Oh just call me Miss Odie, I know that’s what all you kids do” Pearl said, mistaking the girl’s silence for being unsure of how to pronounce her name (“it’s Nigerian, not impossible” she thought, but as long as no one called her Plump Odious, like in middle school, Pearl couldn’t care less about her own name).

“I… Come here every day?” El offered, “And I take notes. And I have lunch?”

“Yes, your attendance rate is near perfect” Pearl answered. “And you pay attention in class”. It was an understatement to say the least, Pearl had never seen a student with such a work ethic. Nothing seemed to distract her from taking notes. A fist fight that broke out between two boys in the back of the classroom. The girl sitting next to her starting to puke. El Byers continued to take notes.

And there was that story she heard from Coach Bellamy about her first PE lesson. Pearl shuddered to think of PE, but it reminded her: “Oh, Coach Bellamy wishes to talk to you, can you drop by the gym after we finish here?”.

“Yes”. El responded. “About what, miss… Odie?” El asked, trying out the new name.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll tell you when you get there. Now, your time here. As you said, you follow your lessons closely. Very good.” As the girl had not provided any grades from her former school, something Mrs Byers had not even tried to explain, Pearl had been worried at first that she was a troublemaker or a very slow learner that had failed in all subjects. She continued: “How has the social aspect of starting a new school been? Find any new friends?”

El thought about friends. Friends of the kind that jumped off a cliff for someone else’s sake, friends that went straight into the underground manifestation of a hellish dimension with little hope of ever returning, hoping that it would make your task easier. Friends that stood by you to fight monsters ten times their size, with nothing but a sling shot or some fireworks taped together. Friends that would hide you when you needed hiding, try to outrun a car with their bike to keep you safe, gave you food when you were hungry, clothes when you were cold. In short, El thought of the Party. El missed them.

“I talk to some…” El started, but was cut short by Miss Odemwingie. “Ah yes, the ‘rock’ crowd. I’ll tell you the truth, I was a bit surprised considering…” this time Miss Odemwingie cut herself short. “Anyway, it can take some time to readjust to a new environment.”

Pearl had seen the girl spend some time with the punk rock crowd, which surprised her to say the least. The girl had a clothing style that could best be described as quaint, and the punks seemed to think that clothing that was not torn was not clothing at all. Miss Byers wore light colours, pink, yellow and light blue, and the punks only black. She was quiet, they were as loud as the blatant music they listened to. Maybe the girl was attracted to the bad boy type?

Pearl shuddered, she had seen so many girls from troubled backgrounds throw themselves into the arms of boys. And they never met someone good. So even if they were not abused, they were at least used by the boys. She thought it best to address the matter. “So, anyone more than friends? There are a lot of boys in that group”.

El was shocked. “No, I have Mike!” she blurted out. Even if she did not know the word, she had seen enough soap operas to understand what the woman insinuated, and it made her furious. The mere thought of someone other than Mike being special to her sparked her anger, and Miss Odemwingie would never know that the look El shot her would have been accompanied by a very rough push of air, if El still had had the power to do so.

Thinking of Mike soon melted her anger though. Mike, her Mike. Mike who was never afraid of her, when in the eyes of others, herself even, she was a monster. Mike, who always understood her, even when she lacked the words, even when she did not understand herself. Mike, who never gave up on her, who kept calling her, thinking she was stronger than death itself. Mike, who smelled like home, whose touch was safety and whose lips were bliss.

El missed Mike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:  
> Miss Odies methods for finding beaten and abused kids comes from my mother, who worked in the school system.  
> That cigarettes increase the risk of cancer has been known since the 1950's, and actions (like the ban of advertizing) to raise public awarness has been used since the 70's.


	2. Time to go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get a glimpse of El's time in school, and why the rest of the Byers are very happy and occupied.  
> El also make a decision.

## Chapter 2

‘Coach’ John Bellamy was of the firm opinion that sport saved kids. When he read about the latest drug killing in the paper, he would loudly state “That’s what happens when they don’t do sports”. He liked to say to his colleagues “Show me an athlete, and I’ll show you a man who stay off drugs”. When a fellow teacher once, in the aftermath of the 1986 World Cup, offered up Diego Maradona as a counter-example, Coach Bellamy just scoffed. He was also of the opinion that hating soccer was as American as loving apple pie. The irony of him hating a sport was not totally lost on him, but he preferred not to think about it. Coach Bellamy went to work each day, with the intent of saving as many kids as possible, and by saving them, he meant having them run laps and do push-ups.

El looked curiously around the gym while she waited for coach Bellamy to acknowledge her. It looked different now that it was not occupied by twenty teenagers. Over a door, a painted arc read “Mens sana in corpore sano” in bright green letters on a yellow background. Coach Bellamy was busy picking up orange cones that was scattered across the room in a seemingly random pattern. El figured she could ask the coach about those strange words, and if he didn’t know, she would ask Mike in her weekly letter to him. Writing was still hard for her, but it was the only way she could communicate with Mike. And she did what she had to do in order to stay in touch with Mike.

Miss Odie had seemed very interested in Mike, and had asked El a lot of questions about him. At first El had been thrilled to talk about Mike, but the questions quickly turned from what his last name was and where he lived to weird questions that El didn’t understand. Miss Odie gave up after a few minutes and sent her over to the gym.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The coach looked up from his cones and waved her over to where he was standing. “So, Miss Byers, you want to tell me about that little stunt you pulled earlier today?”

El looked back at him with a blank look.

“Look, I know I put you with the slow kids, sorry about that” the coach continued, “but degrading them like that? Unnecessary, young lady”.

El realized that this had something to do with the PE lesson earlier. The coach had divided the class in two groups and barked at them to do a quick warm-up and then do a 400-meter race.

El found that she almost longed for the lab. Not the cold concrete or the abusive punishments of course. But in the lab, nothing was ever uncertain. She would be given a task with clear instructions, and if she was supposed to run, there would be no doubt where she was to start and stop. Here, everyone expected her to just know where how far 400 meters was, and where the start and the finish line were. In the lab, she was given her task, and then she would do it until she fainted, or Papa said she could stop. In school, if you gave it your all, the other kids thought you were crazy, and the teachers gave you worried looks. But on the contrary, not trying at all had the teachers scold you and the kids scoff at you. In school, and life in general, everything was implicit and everyone she met expected her to just know things, things she had never came across in her life. So sometimes, she missed being Eleven.

Test subject Eleven never worried about her friends, because she had no one to be friends with. Test subject Eleven never worried about which clothes to wear, because she only had hospital gowns. When she started her new school, she soon spotted a gang of kids that had the same clothing style as Kali and her friends had. She felt drawn to them, remembering her ‘bitchin’ style and being accepted into Kali’s group. They just laughed at her “Oh look, pretty new girl deem us worthy to speak to!” She soon realized it wasn’t her, but the clothes she wore that made them reserved. And once they had accepted her, she found out that wherever they were, people picked fights with them. And all the fights started with the aggressor yelling about their “ugly clothes” or something similar. Clothes could make friends and enemies it seemed. And it changed, all the time! A band t-shirt could go from cool to “Are you still into that band?” in a week. Sure, it was never comfortable, but sometimes, the memory of just having hospital gowns was almost nice.

In the lab, she knew. She knew what to do. She knew when she would get food and how much (except that time someone, probably Brenner, decided they wanted to see how starvation affected her powers). She knew she would not get into a fight unless she refused to do a task.

Still, El was happy she had escaped the lab, and she knew her life was better outside it. But the more she thought about, she realized what it was that made it better. Or rather, who. Mike made her life good. At first, Mike gave her warm clothes, and, years later, when she bought new clothes, he complimented her “I like the style, by the way”. Mike gave her food that tasted good, to eat when she choose so herself, and he tried to give her the best food he knew, his mother’s. Mike was her friend, and her love, and he was clear about it. Even when he was mad at her, he let it show. Mike did not let her doubt or wonder, with him she knew.

El missed Mike.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was hard to say who was the happiest with the move to Detroit, Jonathan Byers or his brother Will. Jonathan considered the move a blessing. For all of his life, he had liked three things, photography, reading and listening to music other people hated. For all of his life, he had lacked two things, money and a context where he fit in.

Detroit had record stores where he could find the most amazing stuff to listen to, and Detroit had given him the opportunity to make enough money to afford all the records he could ever want.

He knew from working the newspaper in Hawkins that the papers sometimes bought pictures from amateur photographers to go along with articles. What he hadn’t known but soon learned was that the Detroit newspapers happily bought pictures that illustrated their stories, and most of their stories was about drug killings and traffic accidents. With a little help from Will and his knowledge of radios from AV Club, Jonathan had manage to tune in to the police radio frequency. Now he spent his nights (he had never been one for going to bed early anyway) cruising around Detroit and listening in, and when he heard a call about a violent crime he went there, snapped off some pictures before officers could close the scene down and then went to develop them at the office of the nearest newspaper.

He was good at what he did. His often dark pictures went perfect with the stories they illustrated, and he seemed to have a talent for finding the most horrible thing that happened each night. And as horror sold papers, and Jonathan best captured horror, his business was good. As his pictures sold stories, the journalists welcomed him and wanted to work with him. While the pictures developed, Jonathan often found himself at some dive bar, being treated to a free beer while he was interviewed by the journalist to write the piece his picture would illustrate.

Jonathan had toyed with the idea of getting his own place, but for now he stayed at his mothers’ place. He mostly had the place to himself, as he got home from work before the others woke up. He then slept through the day and went up in the afternoon, and used what cooking skills he had to make what was his breakfast and would be dinner for the rest of the family. Sometimes he would stay around the house and see how El had fared in school, but most days he went to browse through books or record shops until what he jokingly called ‘his shift’ started.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eleven walked along the broken pavement on her way home. She felt lonely again. Conn and Emma from the punk crowd had waited around for her after her chat with coach Bellamy, who had went on about running and something called the Olympics and people called Lewis, Mullin, Jordan and Benoit, all while El felt that he spoke in some strange language that she could understand no more than those words in the arc above the door.

Conn and Emma wanted her to tag along to Graystone Hall where some new band was playing tonight. But the entrance fee was $3, and El had no money at all, so she had to turn them down.

Money was a thing El had come to resent. All it did was hinder her from doing what she wanted. She could not call Mike on the phone, because it cost too much money. Once, when Will had needed art supplies for school, it was money that forced them to live off instant noodles and scrambled eggs until Joyce’s next pay-check. Joyce was gone until late evening and Jonathan all night because they needed to work, to get money. How to get money was a mystery as well. Some people “came from money”, like Will’s new friends. Some people just seemed to have it. Others did not. And it seemed that it meant a lot, but in El’s view, money was a barrier, it worked in mysterious ways to stop her from getting what she wanted.

She passed a Greyhound station on her way home. Inside was benches where the passengers could wait for their bus to arrive, and three pay phones. El sat down on one of the benches and looked around for a while. One of the destinations available was Hawkins (“Hawkins, IN. Curbside. Get off only!” the sign said). People kept talking and feeding coins into the phones. A girl of about twenty years talked about hairdos. A man with a shaven head and a uniform of some kind kept going on about bars in a place called Nevada. A middle aged man seemed very upset, but then just shrugged and put the phone back. A few coins came back out and he collected them. If she had her powers, El was certain she could give the phones a small nudge to make all the coins fall out. All she had to do was hold a bag under the coin slot, give the phone a small push and she would have money for concerts, phone calls, maybe even a trip to Hawkins (“$22” the sign said) where Mike lived. But she had no powers.

With a sigh she got up from her bench and went home. It was a nice home, two stories. El had her own room upstairs, next to Will’s room and further down a hallway was a TV room. Downstairs, a medium sized kitchen opened up into a small dining room, and from that you could reach Joyce’s room. Jonathan’s was right next to the hall by the entrance. The house was spacious and kept clean. It was also dark and deserted when El got there. Her “Hello?!” was met with empty silence. As she flicked on the light in the kitchen, she saw a note left on the counter.

“Sorry guys. No time to cook. Great photo opportunity down town. Have pizza on me!

\- J”

Below the note lay two, neatly folded, ten-dollar bills. El took the money and started for the TV room. She wasn’t really that hungry, and eating alone always reminded her of her meals in the lab, so she figured she could wait for the others to come home.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will Byers loved Detroit. Or rather, he loved how his life had shaped out after the move there and his transfer to a school in one of Detroit’s wealthier suburbs. It helped that the school had a focus on art. Will had always loved art and had a talent for it. It definitely helped that he was the best in his class. The other students were the kids of wealthy families who lacked either the will or the skill, or both, to join the family business. Thus, they had been shuffled away to await that the trust fund or inheritance that would support them for the rest of their life came around. They were all passionate about art though.

But Will, Will loved art for it’s own sake and he was good at it. His fellow students saw it, his teachers saw it. Add his unique background and that he had the temperament of an artist to this and he shortly found himself to have star status at the school. His teachers called him a rough, uncut diamond. “Pure talent”, as one of them put it. And he was good at the more normal school subjects as well, something few other students bothered to be. The kids called him Wild Will, and whispered that his mother worked at a fast food joint, that he grow up in a shack in the forest, that he never had any formal training, and yet his works was better than anyone else’s. He frightened them with his original drawings of horrors out of nightmares not yet dreamt. He mesmerised them with his boldness, he would draw someone’s portrait to a perfect likeness and add a wizard’s hat or some other detail that seemed out of place but added to the picture. They were all in awe. And as they knew he came from a poor background, they competed to invite him over for dinners and art projects. Or occasionally, to help them study.

Today, Will found himself at the LeFleur estate, trying to show Brendan LeFleur how equations worked, while being peppered with questions about where his inspiration came from and if he had any special requests for dinner (“no Wild Will, don’t worry, we can ask John to prepare a side dish if you are not into sole”).

Will tried to explain that he really should be going home, after all, it was a long bus ride now that his mother would not pick him up from school. “Oh Wild, never you mind. I’ll ask Charles to drive you! Now, tell me, you seem to favour dark foregrounds on lighter backgrounds?”

At this, Will could no longer resist. “Ah, Brendan, you have to see, it’s about the image inside you, that’s where you make it. Putting it down on paper is just a physical process, right? Now, this” he indicated towards the image in front of them, where a black Mind Flayer loomed, and from beneath it’s legs, Demogorgons crawled forth, “this one is all about fear. I was afraid when I drew this one. It’s the nightmare of a small boy, a nightmare he can’t wake from. Have you ever been scared for your life Brendan? Like, truly fearing your life is about to end? Let me tell you, when you do, darkness is at the front of your mind, and so…”

Will Byers was happy. And he was in no rush to get home.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The phone rang. After she came home, El took a shower and changed into sweatpants and an old band t-shirt Jonathan had given her. For half an hour, El had tried (and failed) to interest herself with whatever soap opera was on, so the interruption was welcome.

“Byers residence.” She answered.

“El! Hi” Joyce Byers voice said. “Is Will there with you?”

El said no, Will was not home yet.

“No?” Joyce inquired. “Oh, he’s probably over at one of his new friends. I must do a few extra hours of work, so you and Jonathan will have to eat without us. Alright sweetie, tell Jonathan I said hi.” And with that, Mrs Byers hang up.

El looked around the room, at the TV running commercials, the unlit lamps, the brown sofa, the empty table. She felt even more alone than she had this morning. She missed Mike even more. She let out a sigh and put her hands in her pockets.

She felt something in her pocket, a piece, no two pieces of paper. The banknotes! Two more dollars and she could go to Mike. El rushed to the kitchen where Joyce kept a small jar of change, emptied the coins into her pocket and rushed out of the door.

She would see him, tonight!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few sidenotes:  
> I love sports, but if you grew up like El, they must be a total mystery. I had to do a lot of googling to find suitable sports stars from the late 80's to refer to, the ones I mention are medalists from the 1984 olympics.  
> Greystone Hall was more or less the center of the Detroit punk movement.  
> Mens sana in corpore sano = a healthy mind in a healthy body (latin)


	3. Getting there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We follow El as she tries to get a ticket to Hawkins. El also has to tell a lie.  
> Ted Wheeler makes an appearance and we get to see ST1/ST2 from his view.

## Chapter 3

The Greyhound station had surprisingly many travellers this afternoon, El thought as she waited in line at the ticket booth. And unfortunately, one of them was none other than Coach Bellamy from her school. And he was right in front of her in the line.

“So, Miss Byers. We meet again.” The coach smiled. “I’m off to see the Bulls. That Jordan boy really is something, right?” El had only a vague idea what a bull where. And, she had learned that the coach liked to say a lot of names she never heard of but didn’t really expect an answer, so she stayed quiet. The coach’s smile faded and he frowned a little. “Going somewhere, on a school night?” he asked.

El realised that telling a teacher that she was about to run away from home and take a bus to her boyfriend with the intent of sleeping in his basement, and missing a day of school in the process, was not a wise move. She needed a lie, a good lie. She thought about the one lie that really had fooled her, the one Mike told her after Hopper threatened him. That one must be fool proof.

“My Nana is sick. I must go see her.” She said.

The coach looked at her and said “I see. And your parents?”

“They’re … gone…” El hesitated.

The coach gave her a look and started to say something, but was cut short by the cashier who loudly cleared her throat to indicate to the coach that if he was first in line, he better make his purchase or stop making the other customers wait. The coach bought his ticket, gave El one more, long look, and departed with a suitcase in one hand and a Sports Illustrated magazine in the other.

As she was now first in line, El put her money on the counter and said “Hawkins”.

“That one leaves in seven minutes. Just so you know. 22 dollars, please.”

El put the two bills on the counter and emptied the change on top of them. The cashier sighed and started counting the small copper coins. She looked up at El with an expression El could not read. “Your short.”

El was unsure what she should answer, after all, what did her height have to do with her ticket?

Before she could say anymore though, the man behind her in the line came up to the counter. El wasn’t to keen on people invading her personal space, and not ready at all for this sudden move, and mentally pushed him, hard. Naturally, nothing happened. “How much?” he asked.

The cashier gave the man an annoyed look but answered just the same “36 cents sir”.

“Here” he said and slid a five dollar bill to the cashier. El looked in surprised as she was handed a small piece of paper she guessed must be her ticket and four dollar bills and some change. “Thanks, I…” She started and held the money out to the man.

“Look girl” The man said. “I don’t know what you’re running from. But that Nana thing was the thinnest story I ever heard. It sounded like the panic lie of a 13-year old or something.”

“He was 14…” El mumbled.

“And you have no luggage, not enough money and are clearly not dressed for travel, so I’m just asking, how bad is it?” The man continued.

“It’s… I… I’m going home.” El was all out of lies, she realised. And home was Hawkins, despite her first twelve years, and home was Mike, because of the last four years.

“Something didn’t work out? Hmm, at least you’re running towards something. That’s always better. Tell you what.” He motioned towards the money she held out towards him. “Keep it, buy yourself something to eat on your rest stop in Indianapolis. Make it something unhealthy, like a donut or a waffle or something, you hear, you’re so thin it’s painful to look at. And girl, you better run now, your bus leaves in three minutes”.

El mouthed a “thanks” and took off running. Her PE coach would have been proud if he had stayed to see her, she ran like the wind and was on the bus with over a minute to spare. The man looked after her for a second, “Hawkins” he thought, “wasn’t that where Jim went off to after he left the force?”

“Alright dear passengers. Welcome aboard this bus headed for the beautiful state of Indiana, we’ll be going to Indianapolis first, where we have a stop for a few hours, and after that we have a few curbside stops along the way before we arrive at Terre Haute. On behalf of me and the company, I wish you a pleasant journey.” The speaker system crackled for a few seconds after the bus driver made his announcement, but fell silent as the bus left Detroit and started it’s journey southward.

El looked out the window. Soon, she would not miss him anymore.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will came home just before ten that evening, delivered home by Charles who worked for the LeFleur’s. He was exhausted and went straight to bed. Joyce got home half an hour later, and did not want to wake anyone up. She did a quick check on Will, who was fast asleep, and went to bed. Jonathan was gone until five in the morning.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Alright everyone” The murmurs of early morning conversation was cut short by the principal as the teachers gathering started. “First off today, we have a missing student. Byers, El. Her guardian phoned me this morning. She was very upset, the poor woman. So, if anyone knows of a place she might have gone, please talk to me after this meeting.” The principal took a deep breath. “Number two, we have a lead on the gang that deals marijuana in the halls, and today…” the meeting continued.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Officer Powell could only tell the Callahan brothers apart by the clothes they were wearing. That was, until they spoke. Phil Callahan, his colleague, was, to use one of Powell’s mothers favourite expressions, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Isaac Callahan though, was smart. He did not speak much, but when he did, what came out made sense to Powell, and often left him with the impression of “why didn’t I think of that?”. Isaac Callahan had stopped by the station to say goodbye to his brother before he made his way back to Indianapolis, where he worked as a plain-clothes detective.

“Hey, Callahan” Powell shouted from the other side of the room, “could you go check out a place on Maple Street? We got a missing girl up in Detroit and one of the places her school think she might have gone to is a”, Powell looked down on his notes, “Wheeler, Mike, lives here on Maple Street.”

“I’ll do it” Isaac Callahan cut in before Phil Callahan could protest. “It’s on the way back to Indianapolis anyway”. It wasn’t. But if Isaac could help his brother keep the job a little longer, a detour to Maple Street was a small thing. “You’d do that?” Powell said, “Great, thanks!”.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ted Wheeler was not a man of words. Laying in his recliner in his living room, surprised by a Wednesday off, he laid thinking that one of the best things with his wife Karen was that she had all the words and thus, they complemented each other. In the first years of their marriage, their dinners consisted of Karen talking about the things she did at work, or some gossip about colleagues, neighbours or distant relatives, Ted only intervening with a small clarifying question every now and then “Milla, the aunt of the lady downstairs?” “No, Ted, Willa, her sister-in-law!”. Ted though himself a good listener, and the questions was as much to show Karen that he listened as for his own clarity.

“How long ago?” His mind assaulted him, “How long ago did you stop asking those questions? Was it two years ago? Five? Twelve?”

The thoughts were, thankfully, pushed aside by the doorbell. Ted grudgingly left his recliner to answer it. The recliner was a favourite of his, and it was the only piece of furniture he had left from his first apartment. When Ted and Karen had moved in together after marriage, the chair had been new, a luxury he afforded himself after landing his first job after college. When Nancy was little, he used to put her to sleep in it. When they had outgrown their apartment and bought a house instead ( a big house, with a garden for the kids to play in, in a small and peaceful community, at the end of a cul-de-sac, like everyone who cared for their family and it’s safety wanted), the recliner was the first thing Ted had unpacked. When he was too tired from work to make it to the bedroom, the recliner was the place he slept. Ted loved his recliner, more than he loved most people.

Ted opened the door and was met by a “How do you do sir”. The man on Ted’s porch was vaguely familiar, Ted was almost certain he had seen him around Hawkins before. But the badge he flashed said Indianapolis Police Department. Ted sighed. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the IPD?” He looked more closely on the badge “… Detective Callahan”.

The detective responded with his own question “Are you Michael Wheeler sir?” to which Ted could only give a small laugh and say “No, that would be my son”.

Ted thought about his son, his one and only son. So stubborn, so set in his way, even if it was for the worse for him.

Ted had tried, how he had tried. When Michael was born to them, Ted had felt confident. He knew what it was like caring for a child after Nancy, and having not to long ago been a boy himself, he knew about being a boy. He would tell his son, show him, help him avoid his own mistakes and be successful. And nothing worked. Michael and Nancy were as different as sun and moon. When Nancy stumbled on something, the best thing to do was to pick her up and deflect her attention “oh what a bad toy, let’s put it away so no one else stumbles on this, could you help me?”. When Michael stumbled, putting him on his feet again with an “oopsie daisy” would only make him cry harder. Nancy loved to learn, and when he read her a story, she devoured every word. Michael wanted to figure things out for himself, when Ted showed him how to open a can with his thumb Michael would do it using his index finger. Michael wanted to tell stories, not listen, so when you read to him, he constantly interrupted with his own ideas “Can the rabbit visit the badger instead of the tiger?”.

Ted was lost, he thought he had this and nothing worked as expected. Worst of all, Ted knew boys could be mean to anyone standing out. School could be a very rough place if you did not stick to the middle of the road, the general interests and tried to fit in. He tried to tell his son this, tried to interest him in baseball and cars. Michael refused to listen, of course. Try as he might, he could not get through to Michael. More and more, he stopped trying and started ordering him instead. And then there was that year…

“Ah, I see. I actually came here looking for a girl…” the detective at the door continued.

…That year when he was thirteen and not even ordering him around helped. And it all started with those government people coming around asking about: “A girl you say?” Ted started. “A girl! The nerve of you people! Have you not bothered this family enough? Three years ago you show up here and tell the worst story ever, say you are looking for a girl, turn my house upside down and scare us all half mad!” Ted was getting more worked up by his own words.

“You traumatized my son for over a year with your wild stories. A year! Is this a damn joke to you? See how much we can mess with the Wheelers? And you know the worst part? Do you?!” Ted was really agitated now.

“I believed in you. I really did. I figured, I go to work every day, for two days I work for myself and the third day, all my earnings go to you government guys, so I figured you lot must be worth all that. And what do I get, a home turned upside down and a terrified family?!?” Ted was screaming now. “There are no hidden girls in our basement, now get the fuck off my property!”.

Isaac Callahan stared in wonder at the tantrum that unfolded in front of him. Working as a police officer and later detective, having people shout bad things at him was not an uncommon occurrence, but this was most, unexpected, to say the least. His intention had been to do his brother a quick favour by having a chat with some boring housewife, not being shouted at by some half maniac. Somehow, he felt sure that both the Wheeler kid he was looking for and the Byers girl that might have gone to him would stay as far away from this man as possible, and with that he took his leave.

Ted stared at the back of the detective. The nerve of the man. A sense of shame filled him, he never swore and now he used **that** word. What if the neighbours heard him? What was he doing before he was disturbed? Ah yes, the chair. With that Ted left all his rage about incompetent government and unfulfilled ideas of raising his kids a certain way and went straight back to his recliner. He had saved his favourite part of the newspaper, the weather pages, to read them last, but he decided he would put that off for a while longer. With that Ted closed his eyes, and in less then a minute he was asleep.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

El looked at the bus stop where the driver had let her off. “No luggage?” he had asked, but she just shook her head and got off. The trip had taken a lot longer then she had expected, and the six hours wait in Indianapolis felt like an eternity, and she just wanted to get going. Her idea had been to get to Mike that same night, to be in his arms, surrounded by his smell and touch. Instead she had dozed on a bench with a half-eaten waffle as company. It didn’t matter, she was here now.

The stop was a bit outside of central Hawkins, but she thought she knew which way to go. It would take a while, but she was close now. She started walking towards Mike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This actually started as a Ted Wheeler fic, but morphed into an Eleven-centric one. The Ted parts of this chapter is a shortened version of what I started out with. On that note, shout out to DBSean who wrote the one and only Ted fic out there.
> 
> In the next chapter Mike will make an appearance, I promise!


	4. Confusions of love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike tries to write a letter.  
> Karen gives El a ride.  
> A couple need to find each other in the woods and the rain.

## Chapter 4

Michael Wheeler sat in his basement and finished up his homework. He didn’t mind homework. Not that he loved doing it either. Homework, like so many other things in life, just was. He did not rush through it though. Once he was done, he really didn’t have anything to do. Yesterday, he had been so bored he had considered finding his old Rubik’s Cube. The cube had been a favourite of his and his friends once, but when Dustin found a magazine where the algorithms for all the needed moves was listed, it turned from an intellectual challenge into memorizing moves, and once that was done, all that was needed to solve the cube was a quick look and muscle memory. Instead, he had spent the hour between homework and dinner thinking about her.

El.

He had thought about what she might be doing, right now. Did she do homework like he did? Perhaps with Will. Or maybe she had wrapped up and was enjoying one of those, in his opinion, horrible soap operas. Or maybe she hung out with some new friends? He decided that she and Will was most likely holed up in front of the TV, laughing at some stupid commercial. He pictured her sitting there, which clothes she might be wearing, how she smiled one of her beautiful smiles.

He thought about writing her, he had so much to tell her, talk to her about, ask her about. He started phrasing the letter in his head. Should he start with telling her he loved her, or should he save that for the end? Maybe both? He did love her more than enough to tell her twice, after all.

Love. El had taught him what love was. She used to say that he taught her so much. That he helped her learn and understand. And he could see that he did that, sure. But ever since he met her, she had taught him as well. He knew now what love was. Love was El. He knew what joy was thanks to her. Joy was seeing her smile. She showed him happiness. True happiness was seeing her smile and knowing he put that smile on her face.

Because of her, he also knew what angst and longing felt like. Angst was calling her in the night and getting only silence as an answer. Longing was knowing she was alive and not be able to be with her.

And she helped him put his own life in perspective. Yes, his room was small, and his mom nagged at him to wear ugly sweaters. But he had a room of his own, a mother who cared for him and warm clothes to wear, and she never had. His room stayed the same size, his mother was still a pain, but with El in his life, he could also see the good in those things.

So sure, he might have helped El understand a few words and concepts here and there. But what was he telling her that a roller coaster was a sort of ride with sloops and turns that people did for fun, compared to her showing him how it felt to be alive and loved? He had learned so much from her, and he wanted, needed, to tell her this. In his head, he wrote and rewrote a letter to her about this until dinner was called.

Back in the present, Michael Wheeler put his notebook on top of his math book and started writing the letter. He was still waiting for her answer to his last one, and he didn’t want to drown her in letters or not answer something she had written about, but telling her this felt important. He figured doing a draft first might not be a bad idea.

It was harder than he had expected. What had sounded smart and clear in his head looked corny and diffuse on paper. He had pictured El smiling her beautiful smile more brightly the further she read, and now he pictured her frowning more deeply instead. He erased, and he restarted, and had crumbled and tossed several drafts when his mothers voice interrupted him with calls to dinner.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karen Wheeler sat behind the wheel of her car when she spotted a girl walking along the road. Karen had dropped Holly off at Kindergarten before doing a quick stop for some potatoes she needed for tonight’s dinner. She barely registered how many she bought or what the clerk chatted about, her mind was occupied with Holly. It amazed her that her little girl, her toddler, her baby, was big enough that her compulsory education had started.

It also put her to the question what she was to do now. For almost twenty years, she had devoted her life to her family. She was a stay at home mother and she was proud of it. She had taken her best years and given them to her children. Now, they needed her less and less. Nancy had gone. Michael soon would. And Holly, well, this year it was only a few hours a day, but with every year, school would take up more and more hours of her time, leaving Karen free to do something else than look after her.

She could put those hours into cleaning and cooking, going along as if nothing had changed. She could give herself a break, and spend long hours lazing away in the garden with a magazine and a cup of coffee, and after lunch maybe a glass of wine. Or she could find work, maybe something of the voluntary kind to help those worse off than her, or a job that payed to help Ted build the kids college funds.

She thought of her kids. Of Nancy, who would make it, college fund or no college fund. The girl was a slugger (not the most female of traits really) and would reach her goals. And if she happened upon a glass roof in the process, she would just chew through it. Mike, well, Mike could go either way. He was determined, and he loved to tell a story. If the story he imagined for his life worked out the way he thought it, he could be very successful, but if the world did not comply to his wishes, he would have a hard time readjusting. And Holly, the girl was curious, but she was still a bit to young to know if that curiosity would keep her traveling the world looking for new things and people, or if it would best be stilled by doing scientific research.

She also thought of an iced bottle of white wine, dripping condense in the summer sun.

The girl walking alongside the road interrupted her thoughts.

There was something vaguely familiar about the girl. Karen was curious. The girl kept walking with a stride that looked determined, but tired. She pulled up next to the girl, turned the crank for the passenger window and asked: “Can I offer you a ride somewhere, miss?”.

The girl gave Karen a look that she could see had been doe eyed a few years ago, but now had a layer of tiredness too it. She smiled though, and her eyes joined the smile, but Karen did not miss that the girl’s eyes widened slightly, like in fear, when she looked directly at her. “Yes. Please.” The girl said as she got in the car.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eleven was so focused on walking that she barely registered the car pulling up next to her. She was also very tired, so when the smiling middle-aged woman in the car offered to drive her, she smiled back at her and accepted the offer.

She looked up when she started to enter the car, and a jolt went through her. She knew who this woman was. She was Mike’s mom. She had seen pictures of her, eaten her food, heard Mike talk about her, spoken to her on the phone even. They were supposed to be introduced come Christmas, something Mike was very nervous about.

But now she was here, with the woman who made Mike. Without her, there would be no Mike. She wanted to say something to her, thank her. But somehow, “Thank you for making Mike”, did not feel like the right thing to say.

“You usually don’t talk about that stuff” Joyce had said the day after she took her in. “And I guess Hopper never did, because men are idiots. They charge headlong into a hail of gunfire but are afraid of the most natural thing in the world.” She then went on to explain how people become parents, about being a woman and a few other things. El listened.

So El knew, and she was grateful towards Karen, but she did not know how to express this to Mike’s mom. She figured she should ask Mike first, he always knew what to say.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And where would you be going then, young lady?” Karen asked.

“Maple Street.” The girl answered. “If it’s no trouble?”

“Oh, that’s no trouble at all. I live on Maple Street myself. Let me guess, are you visiting relatives? You have some of Mrs. Anderson in you. No, don’t tell me! I can always tell when I guess correctly. Not Anderson, then…” Karen kept talking as they sped towards Maple Street. As they pulled into it, she spotted a red-headed girl skating maybe forty feet ahead of them.

“Look!” Karen said with some hesitation. “It’s the Mayfield girl.” She explained. “Off to spend the night at the Sinclairs again.” Karen let out a deep sigh. “I think it’s scandalous, if you ask me. Let me tell you, I would never let my Mike have a girl spend the night like that. It’s just not proper. No, if Mike tried to have his girl over for the night, I would be firm. Not in my house. I’ll tell you that!”

“Mike. A girl?” the hitchhiking girl asked.

“Ah. Yes. Let me tell you, my Mike is quite popular with the girls. He’s so handsome and kind. First there was that girl last summer, but she hasn’t called for quite a while now, so I guess that blew over. But I’m sure he has a girlfriend; he has just not worked up the courage to introduce me to her yet. But a mother always knows, you know! And he would never even try to have her over like that!“ Karen indicated towards Max, further up the road, “He was well raised, like all my children, he knows what’s proper”.

“Can I get off?” The girl suddenly asked. “Now.”

The look the girl gave Karen was a look full of loss, and Karen was at once certain where she had seen her before. Sometimes after that funny business outside Starcourt last year, she had been hanging around Lucas and the Mayfield girl, looking as sad as she was now. She had seen her when she came to pick up Mike and Nancy.

“Here?” Karen asked and braked. “Of course, but where are you going to, I can…”

She had no time to say anything else to the girl, who opened the door and took off for the woods behind the Wheeler home. It had to have something to do with the Sinclair-Mayfield story, Karen realized, and she was pretty sure what was going on. Just wait until she told Ted about this!

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eleven ran. She ran as fast as her feet could carry her. But try as she might, she could not outrun her tears. Mike had a girlfriend. A girlfriend! A girlfriend his mother fought to keep out of his bed! She ran until she could not keep herself upright anymore, sank herself down on a fallen log and cried until she had no tears left.

Maybe it was for the best. It was meant to be this way. She was a freak best left alone. Mike was such a nice person, he deserved better. He already had. Mrs Byers did too, she had two popular and successful kids, she didn’t need her.

She knew her place now. Where she came from and where she always was meant to end up. It beckoned to her, a bit further into the woods behind the wire fence. She was not ready yet, but soon, she would be. She would go back to the lab, and not bother anyone again.

She recognized these parts of the woods. She had lived here for a long time. She could live here a few days more. Eleven sighed, wiped off her tears and snot with her hand and went about collecting branches to build a shelter, she smelled the rain on the wind.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Ted!” Mike knew the tone in his mother’s voice, she was upset about something in the neighbourhood. “Ted! You have no idea what I just found out. And Michael, you should hear this as well.” Mike let out a sigh and settled in for a dinner of boring gossip. At least the food was nice, whole-baked trout with mashed potatoes and a white wine sauce. It was, however, obvious that his mother had shared the Pinot Gris with the recipe.

“Michael!” She said. “We have to talk about your friend Lucas and his attitude towards girls.” Karen swung her attention to Ted. “Can you believe them?, as parents I mean!”

“Now honey, we talked about this…” Ted started. “The man risked his life for this country, maybe we could let him run his family as he pleases?”

Mike sighed. He had heard this discussion before, and he suspected he would again. Everyone in the party knew that Max home life was not always the best, and on the occasional night when it went from bad to really bad, the Sinclairs would let her use their guest room. And while Lucas would have loved to sneak over to her during those nights, it was impossible for him to do so. “It’s Erica.” He lamented to Mike one night. “She is not a girl, she is a god damn watch dog! I so much as look in the direction of the guest room and she starts barking.”

“It’s improper.” Karen said. “But worse, it has made the boy lose all sense of decency.” She looked at Mike again. “Did you know he has two ‘girlfriends’ now?”

“What?! Mom, no. Why do you think that?”

Karen took a sip from her glass and started telling her story. She told them about how she had offered this girl who was on her way to Maple street a ride. That they had seen the Mayfield girl and that Karen had told her about her feelings about such things.

“And so I told her I would never let my Mike have his girlfriend over, and she just ran off! And then, I realised I had seen her before, she was with Lucas that awful night at Starcourt! It’s sad that she had to hear from me that her boyfriend was a two-timer, but better than not knowing, right?”

“Mom, I don’t have…” Mike’s words died in his throat. “Mom, what did she look like?”

“Oh you know, like she always does, boyish clothes and a skateboard”

“No! Not Max. The other girl. Please mom it’s important!”

“Oh. She. Well, she wore a t-shirt with one of those loud rock bands. Pretty short, thin. Brown hair and eyes. Didn’t speak much.”

Mike bounced up from his chair. It was her. It had to be. El was here and now his mother had scared her off with her stupid chatter. “Which way?”

“Michael, sit down!”

“No! Which way did she go?!”

“I really don’t think, I spent hours cooking…” Karen’s protests died down when she saw the look on her boy’s face. “She took off into the woods behind our house, like I said”.

Mike heard the last of Karen’s words as he was running through the kitchen door. El was here. Close to him. And he would find her. He did find her in those woods once, and he would do it again.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is a known fact that boys don’t cry. At least if they want to keep any sense of pride and worth. Mike himself had used this fact against Lucas earlier in the day. As they were biking home from school, Lucas had been unlucky enough to go over some gravel that was on the road, and his wheels disappeared under him. He scratched up his knees, bad, and some of the gravel got stuck in the wound on his right knee. Dustin tried to help him up, and Lucas punched his arm and asked him to “Get off of me you idiot!”. He then tried to get on his bike and keep going.

“Lucas, please” Mike said. “You are in so much pain you are almost crying, can we at least walk for a bit?”. They both knew what Mike really was saying. _It’s pretty bad, take a rest, we’ll help you_. But they both also knew that Mike almost begged Lucas, _don’t embarrass us and yourself by crying_. They led their bike’s home, together.

Mike knew that boys do not cry. He never cried. He had refrained from crying for so long, he almost had forgotten how it felt. But now, he did. He cried his heart out. He had spent hours going through the woods, he had shouted her name, he had pictured every scenario (from the happy ones where they met and kissed for a long time to the horrible ones where he found her with a broken neck), he had gotten wet and muddy as it started raining, but for all his effort; he had not found her.

In the end, he sat himself down on a fallen log and cried. She was gone, she had been here in Hawkins, so close, and he had missed her. He kept crying. For El. For her first twelve years, for the year they had been separated, for all the pain and fighting she had to go through, for the two days they had been broken up, for her moving away from him, for all their future together that was now not to be.

“I did that. Just now” A girl’s voice said.

Mike looked up. She was there, holding an armful of tree branches of all things. She looked at him.

Mike threw himself up from the log and hugged her, branches and all.

“El!” was all he could say.

“Mike” she said. And averted her eyes.

“You’re here. You’re really here. Come, let’s get out of the rain” Mike took El’s hand and started walking. She let his hand drop and stood her ground among the discarded branches.

“El,” He said. “El please. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out, but can we please get out of the woods now?”.

El nodded and followed Mike’s lead. They walked in silence for a minute.

“What did you do, right now?” Mike broke the silence.

“What?” El asked.

“You said you ‘did that, just now’ when you found me.”

El stopped and looked at him. “Crying. On that log.”

“But El, why?” Mike asked.

“Your mom. She said... She said you have a girlfriend.”

Mike interrupted her. “I do.” He reached for her hand again but she took a step back. “Listen El. I do have a girlfriend.” If El had not spent all her tears an hour ago, she would have burst out crying again. Instead, she gave Mike a stoic look and waited.

“It’s you! You are my girlfriend.”

“Oh” El took a step towards Mike’s and looked up at him with the beginning of a smile on her lips. “Me, huh?”

“You.” Mike said. “For as long as you’ll have me”. He matched her half-smile. “Now come on, I think my girlfriend needs to get out of the rain”.

El took Mike’s hand and together, they started walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, correct me if I am wrong, but Karen and El have never met (at least on screen). They speak on the phone once in ST3, but that's it.  
> And maybe El overreacts a little here, but she is spent from traveling and are really not prepared to have anything threaten the last shred of belonging she feel.
> 
> And yes, I can solve a Rubik's and it's all about memory and nothing about smarts. One last thing, while almost unthinkable today, back when this story is set, actual boredom with the prospect of nothing to do was actually a thing. =)


	5. Some nerdy science shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kissing scene.  
> Some nerdy science shit.  
> A talk about death, life and the in-between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve done some scary stuff in my life: Run through a forest with 5.56 bullets whistling past me, taken a leap from a 7 meters diving platform, asked the most fantastic woman for her hand in marriage and so on. But trying to write a kissing scene between two insecure and yet passionate teenagers, posting it for others to see, in a language I picked up from video games and paper back novels, probably takes the cake.  
> I’ll add an AN at the end where I’ll problematize and discuss the first scene in particular, as well as some other things in the chapter in general. Bear with me.

## Chapter 5

”So.” Mike said. ”This brings back memories”.

He silently thanked his mother for storing the dry laundry in the basement when he found a pile of fresh clothes, and discarded his wet sweater and t-shirt.

“Yes.” El said. “Good memories”.

“The best!” Mike agreed with a smile as he turned around to face El, the t-shirt he picked out in hand. “Who-a!” Little had he expected that El also had removed her wet t-shirt.

An almost mischievous smile went across El’s face. The majority of the Party were boys. Most of the people in the punk crowd in school, also boys. El had spent enough time around teenage boys to pick up the significance of the female upper body to them. But to actually see Mike’s reaction, it was stronger than she had expected.

Mike looked at her in awe. His eyes scoured every square inch of her skin as he tried to commit it all to memory. He knew he would return to this instant in time many times over in the coming weeks. (What he didn’t know was that he would, years later, think of this as a moment in his life when he fully grasped something. Like he didn’t really know what balance was until he learnt to ride a bike, he hadn’t understood desire until this moment). But, looking intensely, he could not miss the goose bumps that covered her skin, or her slight trembles. Michael Wheeler had always put the need of others before his own, and he wasn’t about to stop. “El. You’re shivering! Here. Let me” He went over to her, slipping the t-shirt he picked for himself onto her.

El was cold. And at the same time, she felt oddly hot where Mike had laid his eyes on her. She was thankful for the dry t-shirt. And she was curious, she had acted without thinking, wanting only to get rid of her soaked t-shirt, and the effect on Mike had been interesting, to say the least. There had been something in his eyes, something new, something tempting, something – something else to add to the long list of things she had no idea about. She deflated a bit. But Mike stood close to her, his hands still on her back where he helped put the t-shirt on. He was beautiful. And she hadn’t come all this way to not kiss him. She pushed herself up on her toes. Grabbed his shoulders. Leaned her face upwards and searched for his mouth with hers.

He met her halfway.

Mike lost himself in the kiss. He kept burning inside. He would… , he would… , he wasn’t really sure what he would do, but he would give her his all and he kissed her like he was a man dying from thirst and she was life-giving water. El was life and he had never wanted to live like he did in that moment.

“MIKE. Mike. MIKEmikemikemikemike. MIIIKE!”

The shouts that interrupted them was followed by a loud bang on the door.

“Mike! Open the door, it’s wet as hell out here! Come on Mike, it’s about El! Open up!”

Michael Wheeler gave a small sigh, looked at the girl he loved with a small, resigned smile and gestured towards the door. “I guess I’ll better…”

Dustin barged inside and continued his tirade. “Finally Mike! Do you know you can get hypothermia from being wet for too long? Do you want to kill me?”

“Yes, Dustin, I might want to kill you. But what about El?” Mike answered.

“Anyway, El. El is… here?” Dustin interrupted himself when he spotted El. “And she’s wearing your clothes? And you are not wearing your clothes?” He took a breath. “No, no.” He gestured to Mike. “Spare me the details. But it’s good that you’re here El. I mean it’s nice to see you. And, I think I finally got a lead on your powers. So, they must be connected to the hypothalamus, and I think –”

“Wait!” Mike interrupted. “Why are you researching her powers?”

“Could you please put on a shirt Mike?, it’s even harder than usual to take you serious.” El took a pair of pants to the bathroom while Mike threw on the t-shirt on top of the stack. As she came back out, Dustin continued.

“Well, I was supposed to write a biology paper and stumbled upon all this information when at the library, and I immediately thought of El. She deserves to know, but anyway, the hypothalamus. As you all know, it helps control the nervous system, and all that the nervous system really does is transport signals. Some of the signals are hormonic, but the fast ones are just electric energy.” Dustin cleared his throat and looked at El. “If I could stay with the hypothalamus for a while, I had a few questions for you. Would you say that fear lessens or increases your powers?”

El looked at Dustin, it was a simple question really, despite all the strange words he said before asking it. “Fear makes me stronger”.

“Ah, I thought so! And food, or hunger, how does that come into them?”

El shivered from the memory of the starvation experiment but her answer was clear. “I get very hungry when I use them. If I am to hungry, they won’t work.”.

“Excellent! It all fits. The hypothalamus controls the intake of food and, at the same time, is the place where the brain processes fear.” Dustin looked very happy. He continued. “Alright, the nervous system transports energy through the electron transport chain, which is an exergonic process, and –“

“Wait!” Mike interrupted again. “Exergonic process?”

“Ah, it’s like, a flow of energy from the system to the outside, so it means that the system spends energy. Electric energy, or electrons, in this case.”

“But,” Mike asked. “Where does the energy come from?”

“Mitochondria, my boy. Mitochondria.” Dustin looked like he wanted to say the word a third time, but thought better of it and went on. “They are like the power plant of the cells”, he explained, “they make energy, and actually, they can make a lot more energy than a normal human typically uses”. He looked at Mike and El, who stood holding hands. “Don’t you see that it all fits? The potential of the body to create massive amounts of electrical energy, the presence of a system to transport said energy, through a process that feed energy into the surroundings. And it all connects to the hypothalamus.” Dustin looked at El. “If anything, I would say that you are like an electric eel”.

“Dustin!” Mike shrieked. “She is not an eel!”

“And neither are electric eels! It’s like the misnomer of the century, they are actually a knifefish of the gymnotidae family. But what they can do, is attack, sense and communicate through electric currents their body makes.” He looked at El again. “Much like you can, right? I’ve seen you fight, kill, with your powers. And you can ‘see’ people from afar, much like the electric eel can sense creatures it can’t see with its eyes. Can you communicate as well?, I’ve not seen you do that.”

“Not talk” El said. “or, if someone talks, I can make others hear them. And signals –” She indicated to Mike’s old Supercom that lay on a shelf, “if a signal is weak, I can make it stronger”. She thought of how Mike had felt her through the void. “Sometimes, I can touch people”.

“Perfect!” Dustin almost purred. “Electric eel! No really, I think you are just born with the ability to direct something we all have, a flow of energy inside our bodies, to the outside of your body.”

“Alright, alright.” Mike said. “That sounds, I mean, it’s plausible but…”

“Wait.” El interrupted. “Why won’t they work? Will they be back?”

Dustin looked a bit sad. “I don’t know. I guess, you know, puberty is probably the cause for your waning powers. If you consider it, compared to when we met you, you have like entire new body parts you didn’t back then.”

Mike blushed furiously, remembering how he minutes ago had seen some of those body parts. Dustin didn’t seem to notice and went on “Look, puberty is more or less a massive dumping of hormones into the nervous system from the hypophysis.”

“The what?!” Mike asked.

“The pituitary gland, Michael, remind me to never partner with you on Biology. But not only is the transport system choked with all the extra hormones, the rapid growth and stuff like that can make it hard to just walk sometimes. Just ask our baby giraffe over there” Dustin indicated to Mike.

“Look, just because of that one time…” Mike started in his defence, but Dustin just kept talking. “So considering that something as easy as walking can be hard, just think of how impossible using your powers would be.”

El was not satisfied. “Will. They. Be. Back?”

Dustin throw up his hands. “Yeesh El! I don’t know, okay?!? Maybe it’s like asthma, nine out of ten kids that have asthma outgrow it. Or maybe, they are like a muscle and once your body become more settled they will be back stronger than ever.” A look of worry danced across his face. “And if they do, promise me you’ll be careful?”

“Why?” El asked.

“Well, you will be very strong. Think of it like a discus throw…”

El looked at Mike for an explanation. “It’s a sport, you throw a plate-like thing as far as you can”. El sighed, it seemed she could never escape this sport thing.

Dustin continued. “So, a 12-year old might throw a discus 25 meters, and that is if they train a lot. A grown-up athlete will throw it 60 meters easily, 70 with a good throw and maybe 75 with a perfect one. That’s three times as far. And you.” Dustin looked at El. “You tore the very fabric of reality when you were twelve. You also disintegrated an interdimensional monster and transported yourself into another plane of existence, at a time when you were already exhausted. I can’t even imagine what you could do if you were three times as powerful, well rested and had had the chance to hone your skills? Just, …, be very careful, okay?”

El sank down on the sofa. Mike went with her, their hands still clasped together. “This is all, a bit much.” She said.

“Yeah, I get that. You probably want to process this.” Dustin said. And suddenly he grinned. “Or jump Mike’s bones. Puberty, powerful stuff. That, I don’t need to see”. He made as to leave.

“Wait, Dustin.” El called. “I… Thanks. Thanks for thinking of me.”

“You’re kidding, right? I think of you all the time. We all do. And this research stuff, it’s the most fun I had since Mikey Longlegs here slipped that day when…”.

Mike groaned. “Do you have to keep bringing that up?”.

“Uh, yeah. Until you embarrass yourself even worse, at least. But for now guys, bye!”

\------------------------------------------------

Mike and El sank lower in the sofa, and somehow, closer, until they were laying down, her left leg on top of his stomach, her head on his chest, his left hand on the back of her neck.

“Look El. Why are you here? I’m very, very happy that you are. I love you, you know. But you didn’t call or write or anything. Is everything alright? Did something happen?” Mike gently caressed the back of her neck with his fingertips as he spoke.

And El spoke. She talked about how hard it was to know what to do, what to say, what to wear. How she could see it in people’s eyes when she said something that threw them off, but how hard it was to know what it was she said. And with every word she felt the shame she had built up about being so off, so unknowing of what to do, drip out of her. Even though she felt more exposed telling Mike about how hard the world was for her, than when she stood half-naked in front of him, she kept talking. 

“El.” Mike said. “It’s hard for me too. Probably for everyone. And I have trained all my life to talk to people.”

The trickle of shame that left her with her words increased in size, she smiled. But she was not done.

She kept on talking, she told him about being lonely. Lonely at school, lonely at home. How she longed for someone to talk to, someone to ask questions. How she longed for him, and their friends. She told Mike about how happy Joyce was for Will, how she always talked about how popular and successful he was, when she was home.

Mike frowned. He had pictured Will to be by her side. “And Jonathan, what keeps him away?”

“He takes pictures of dead people. He says it sells newspapers.” She paused briefly and looked up, into his eyes. “Why Mike? Why do people want to read about death? Death is horrible.”

Mike was unsure of what to say, but he tried to calm her. “A lot of people are afraid of death. And maybe, by reading about that it happened to others, they become less afraid?”

“No Mike, it’s not…” El took a deep breath and was silent for a long time. “You know, sometimes when I lived at the cabin, I would walk through the forest. And in spring, there was butterflies and you know, the feeling of a butterfly when it’s … “ El moved her free arm up and down.

Mike was happy that El had moved away from death and answered. “Ah yes, flutter, is the word”.

“Yes” She said. “That’s what it feels like. When I killed those people at your school, I felt them… felt them flutter against me. They didn’t want to go. But I was scared, and so much stronger than them, so I…” She squeezed the fingers on her right hand into her palm in a quashing gesture “… them, and they stopped fluttering”.

Mike looked at her with widening eyes as she continued speaking. “I dream about them. Bad dreams. Sometimes, when I am very alone, I dream about them even though I’m awake. They look at me, but they can’t look. And I feel that, that flutter that stopped”.

El started sobbing, and Mike held her. Mike did not hunt or fish, and if a fly entered his room, he opened the window and gently shooed it out. He knew nothing about killing. He knew hate though. And he hated the people from the lab. He hated them for taking her, for keeping her, for experimenting on her, for how they treated her. And now, he could add hating them for dying to her. Those bastards would not leave her alone even as they lay rotting in their graves.

Mike also knew love, and he would love Eleven even if she killed every other living thing on the planet, him included. “They deserved it.” He said silently. A bit louder, he said: “You had no choice El, they would have taken you back”.

“Yes.” She said weakly. “But I’m just me, just one. And I would have lived.”

“I don’t think I would have.” Mike said. “And you are not ‘just’ you. You are you, the most amazing girl in the world.” His eyes went a bit darker. “And they did deserve it. What they did to you, when you were too young to know otherwise or defend yourself, it was worse than death.”

“It’s the eyes…” She started. “I knew them. They remind me of other things. From the lab. The tall man with brown hair, he was there when I got this” She indicated to her tattoo. “The blonde woman, she was the first to cut my hair. The short man, he always carried me to my room when I could not walk”. She paused and looked up. “Wait, what would you not have done?”

“Live.” Mike answered truthfully. “Knowing you were in there, I think I would have died trying to get you out.” Mike smiled. “Not knowing where you were almost did me in”.

They lay in silence for a while. El did not find the words for what she wanted to say. Mike was afraid of what might tumble out of him if he started to speak again. El finally broke the silence. “Mike. What are those balls of paper on the floor?”

“Oh those.” He went a little pink. “They are, were, a letter to you”.

“That many?” She asked. “What are they about?”

“No, it’s just one. Or, many tries for one. I just, wanted it to be perfect.” The shade of pink reached his ears. “It’s about love. How you have showed me what love, and life, is. That you are a great teacher. You teach me how to be happy.” He averted his eyes. “It’s corny, I guess, but it’s true”.

El smiled. “I am?” She reached up and pressed a quick kiss on his cheek before settling her head on his chest again. She felt better. Content almost. It was as if there had been a glass sheet separating her from the world for so long, and now it had been removed. Colours looked clearer. The air felt fresher. Smells more vivid. The dead were behind that glass now, not she. They kept clawing at it with their memories of the lab in tow, but for now, they could not get in. She felt safe.

Her friends all thought about her. Dustin spent hours down at the library for her sake. Mike spent hours trying to write her the perfect letter. And the way he had looked at her earlier, there was something explore there. For the first time in months, she looked forward to exploring something, diving into unknown territory. With Mike. She smelled Mike, she felt Mike. This was what she had been running towards, she realized. And now she was here.

In less then a minute, El was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first things first. I do not think that stripping is a remedy for traumatized girls. The contrary, in fact. But I do trust Mike to always make El feel good about herself. Accepting who you are and how you look, and liking it, is an important step to happiness. And I think, that if we could see ourselves through the eyes of our loved ones, we would probably think better of ourselves =)
> 
> The nerdy science stuff Dustin comes with are one part Firestarter (the pituitary gland), one part Parasite Eve (mitochondria) and two parts my imagination and what Wikipedia tells me.
> 
> And finally, El get to sleep peacefully!


	6. (Re-)Solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of everything

# Chapter 6

The ceiling was slightly uneven, Mike decided, and it bothered him. The thoughts buzzing around his brain would not let him go back to sleep, and he needed to think them through, and yet his brain was stuck on an uneven ceiling. But, had his thoughts not kept him awake, his body probably would have. He was to tall to fit either his feet nor his head in the sofa, and his neck protested the position it had been in for to long. The sofa was not wide enough to fit him entirely either, and he had used his free arm to prop himself up several times the last hour. The absence of a quilt didn’t help either, as he was in the somewhat cold basement.

Mike would not have traded his place for any other, as half beside and half upon him, there on the sofa, lay Jane Eleven ‘El’ Byers Hopper Ives, whom he had found out in the forest one rainy night back in ’83, and again yesterday. That first night they met, she barely said a word, but yesterday, she had said a lot, perhaps more than he’d ever heard her speak, and it was her words that kept him awake.

Mike’s mind burned with the unfairness of it all. His El was the prettiest, nicest, best human being out there, and all the world gave her for it was sorrow and loneliness.

She fought for her freedom, and managed to escape the lab, only to end up in the upside down. She found a father figure who promised her a home, and all he ended up doing was locking her up and shutting her away from the world, once again. She found her mother and aunt, and it was to late. She moved in with the Byers, and it was like she was living by herself, alone in a foreign city.

Mike had known for a long time that the world was not fair. Not in the small sense of Hawkins, where some people could beat others up without repercussions. And not out in the big world, where some people died from obesity while others died of starvation. He had reconciled with this knowledge for his own part. But for hers? For her he wanted only what she deserved, and that was everything.

But he couldn’t really blame Will. Will had been bullied all his life, beaten up at least once a week since he was seven years old. If he had found a place where he did not only avoid being bullied, but where he was accepted, popular even, who was Mike to say he should not indulge in his popularity?

And what had he expected? Will had never been to keen on bringing the girls into the party in the first place. A part of Mike’s mind protested (“She saved his life. Twice!”), but no, Mike could not blame Will. Or Joyce, she had to make ends meet. Jonathan, he’d never even counted on, Mike was surprised he still lived with his mother, if anything.

No, if anyone would be there for El, it had to be him. Mike pondered, both the ceiling and what he could do, as the hours of the night went by.

\----

El drifted out of sleep, feeling more rested and comfortable than she could ever remember. She let her eyes slowly open, and saw Mike, who laid looking up with a look that was far away. She took a moment to take in how he looked.

His black hair zigzagged across his forehead, and she reached up and let her fingers gently stroke some of it.

His eyes suddenly found hers. “Hey.” He said.

“Hi.” She said.

Her fingers continued downwards, over his nose, and then to his left, where she traced the dark rings underneath his eyes that contrasted beautifully with his pale skin. The paleness was broken by brown freckles as she let her fingers slide down his cheek. As cheek turned to jaw line and chin, a few strands of uneven length and thickness fought to push through his skin. El stroked one of the strands and let her fingers continue down over Mike’s neck and collarbone. Unlike hers, Mike’s chest did not give way to softness, but instead her fingers felt the hardness of his ribs. She let her fingers come to rest as she felt a thumbing beneath them.

“My heart”. Mike said. “It beats for you”.

He was quiet for a second, and then he throwed his head back and moaned. “I’m sorry! I’m such a dork. That was the corniest…”

“Ssh!” El hushed. “Be still.”

Her fingers resumed their journey over Mike’s chest, until her own thigh was in the way. She let her fingers wander over it and onto his stomach. His stomach was not bone hard like his ribs, but felt firm underneath the fabric of his t-shirt. She gently increased the pressure with her fingertips as she found that she liked that feeling of firmness. She could hear Mike breathe a bit more heavily when she did, and found his eyes with her own. It was back, that look from yesterday. This time, she would know what it meant. She would keep exploring him until she figured it out.

Her fingers tiptoed across his stomach and found what must be his navel, she traced it once and let her fingers continue, ever downwards his tense body.

“El, I…”

Mike had no time to say anything else as the basement door opened and Karen’s voice asked:

“Michael? You down there?”

Mike went from tense to rigid and his free hand grasped El’s.

“Yes, just grabbing some fresh clothes, mom.” He shouted.

“You didn’t sleep down there did you? Your bed is untouched.”

“No, mom, I made my bed of course. I’ll be up in a minute!”

The door closed, and Mike let out a breath. And gave a small laugh. “It’s just, it’s always something. Oh well, how do you want to do this? Do you want to go around front and ring the bell on the door?”

“No.” She said. “I want to be with you.”

“Alright.” Mike took a deep breath and held out his hand. “Let’s go meet my parents.”

\-------------------

Breakfast a Thursday at the Wheeler household was a scene that had played out in more or less the same way hundreds of times. Ted sat at the table reading the newspaper. Karen helped herself to a cup of coffee. Holly poked around in her bowl of cereal.

As Mike and El walked through the door, everyone seemed to freeze for a second. Ted looked up from his newspaper, and did not look down right away. Karen dropped her coffee cup, and by some freak incident it did not shatter or even spill, it landed on the floor, intact with the coffee still in it. El winced, and Mike put out his arm to steady her.

“Mom, dad. This is my girlfriend El.” Mike smiled. “El, this is my father, Ted, my mother, Karen, and my annoying little sister Holly. Everyone, El, El, my family.” He nodded at them as he spoke. Before either adult could say anything, Holly jumped up and ran to El.

“Are you really a princess? How did you escape the desolate castle?”

“Uhm, I…” El had no idea what was happening.

“Mike use to tell me the best bedtime story about you. Can you really do magic?”

“Holly, she’s not the princess from your story.” Mike came to El’s rescue.

“So she’s not the prettiest, bravest girl in the world?” Holly looked up at Mike.

Mike blushed and looked at El. “Oh, she is, just, not the story El. Okay?” Holly seemed only a bit disappointed as she went back to hear cereal.

“So, this is most… surprising.” Ted said.

“Yes. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, both of you.” Karen agreed. “But I guess you want some breakfast while you do that?”

“Yes, thank you.” El said. “You have the best breakfast.”

Karen gave her a questioning look. “We do?”

“Look!” Mike interrupted. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but…”

And he and El went on to give a somewhat accurate tale of how she ended up in Karen’s car.

“So wait, you took the Greyhound to the curb side stop here?” Ted asked and gave Karen a look.

“Oh, that trip is horrible.” Karen continued. “When we had Nancy and only one car, Ted had to use that one to travel for business, what was it, five hours wait in Indianapolis?”

“Five and a half, I think” Ted answered. “Or maybe five hours and twenty minutes.”

“I remember loading a sleeping Nancy into the car so we could go and get you.” Karen’s look was 17 years away.

“Speaking of, next time, I’m sure Mike will have his learner’s permit and use the drive to pick you up as practice driving, right son?” Ted looked at Mike for a second.

“Of course!” Mike said, not really realising he just promised to start getting his licence.

El spoke up. “Next time?”

“Well, we can’t have you worry Mrs. Byers, and steal her food money to boot.”

Karen came back to the present. “Yes. Ted, you must call Joyce and tell her she’s here.”

“Of course honey. Mike, come with.”

Mike followed his father into the hall where the telephone was located. Ted looked through the phone book lying next to the phone for a minute, before he dialled.

“Joyce Byers? Yes. Theodore Wheeler. How are you?” Mike could see that his father listened to something that Joyce was saying for a second before he continued.

“What’s the weather like up there in Michigan? We had a real downpour here yesterday. Thank god it did not turn into heavy rain.” Joyce must have said something again, as Ted stood silent for a while.

“Yes. You have a girl living with you? No. She’s here. Yes. Turned up in our… I mean on our doorstep this morning.” Ted put the hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Mike with a conspiratorial wink “You never know who’s listening in, right.”

Ted continued talking to Joyce. “No, no, she’s fine. Yes. First bus available. No, I can’t accept your money. Maybe she can come back on a more planned visit?” He listened for a little while. “Yes, two weeks. No, I still can’t accept your money.” Ted took a breath.

“And otherwise, are you still driving that old Ford? The timing belt has not given up yet? You had it changed. Two years ago. I see. Everyone drives Japanese these days, but I always said American cars are something special.” The conversation seemed to come to an uneasy halt.

“Yes. I’ll tell Karen you said hi.” Ted put the receiver down and turned to Mike.

“Here son.” He opened his wallet and gave Mike all the cash available. “You make sure she get’s back home alright. No, don’t worry about me, Johnson in sales owes me lunch anyway. And Mrs Byers said your girl can come back and visit in two weeks. I’ll write a check. Got to go, can’t miss the nine o’clock.”

And with that, a very happy Ted got into his car to drive to work. His son both had a girlfriend and was starting his driving lessons, both normal, sensible things to do. And as the company had some business up in Michigan, he thought there might be some sort of tax deductible for interstate travel, and he looked forward to spending his morning researching the possibility.

“Alright Mike.” His mother said as he walked back into the kitchen. “Time to go to school.”

“But mom, I…”

“No discussion! If this little adventure makes you cut school as well, me and your father will rethink this next visit.” Her firm expression softened a bit. “And, I would like to get a chance to get to know El here. Now move!”

Mike knew when he was beat, so he gave a El a quick kiss on the cheek and a look that asked if she was okay with this. She shrugged. “I’ll be back soon, I’ll figure something out.” Mike whispered.

Once a reluctant Mike had gone, Karen turned to El.

“I need to drop Holly off at Kindergarten. You make yourself at home.” She gave her a wink. “I’ll leave some coffee in the coffee maker, if you rinse it I will never know if you drank it. Now, is there anything you like for breakfast before I go?”

\--------------

“El?” Karen asked as she came back through the front door.

“Yes?” El answered.

“I’ve talked to the bus company. There’s a bus that leaves Terre Haute for Detroit this evening. I’ll drive you there.”

“But, Mike…”

“I’m sure he’ll come with and wave you off.” Karen said.

El did not say anything else. Adults had a strange way of needing to be the ones to decide everything. She was here now, but instead of staying with Mike for the weekend, she would have to go back and return in two weeks?

“So, were you okay while I was gone?” Karen asked. “You seemed disappointed in the lack of waffles earlier, let me make you some for lunch.”

“No, thank you , I…” El started.

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all, it’s just butter, milk and self-rising flour really.” Karen started for the fridge.

“No, I mean, thank you, for Mike. He’s so, good.”

Karen looked at her. “He is?”

El nodded. “He is. Good. And he always helps me. And let me have his things. To make me happy. Just, good.”

Karen felt a tear threaten to fall. She never heard anyone praise Mike. Or, his teachers said he was a good student at the evaluation talks, but this was something else. To hear that her son was a good, kind gentleman. And the girl had the good sense to thank her upbringing for it.

Karen did the only thing she could and hugged the girl. “Thank you. It makes a mother proud to hear. And now I have to make you those waffles.”

Karen took a bowl from the cupboard and turned to El. “Wait. He did sleep down in the basement, didn’t he?”

El looked down and shuffled her feet. “Yes.”

“He slept in the basement, on that horrible couch, so you could sleep in his bed. And that’s why it was made. I knew it! He never makes his bed!” Karen thought this was the sweetest thing as she searched for a whisk. “Do you cook?” She asked.

“No. I… I don’t know how.” El said.

“I didn’t either, until I married Ted. But you learn. And now, I like it a lot. Come, let me show you! First, let’s melt the butter…”

\---------------

“Dustin,” Mike said as he kicked down his bike stand, “What are the tell-tale signs of a concussion?”

“Oh you know,” Dustin answered, “Headache, nausea, memory loss, disorientation, feeling very tired. Why? Did you bump your head in the heat of things?”

“The heat of what?” Lucas intervened.

“Oh, you don’t know who Mike spent the night with? Take one guess!” Dustin grinned.

At this time, Mike was literally saved by the bell.

As he stepped into the classroom, he scanned around for Troy. Luckily, he had not found a seat yet. Mike walked up to Troy and stomped his heel down on Troy’s foot with all the force he could muster. “Watch where you’re going, pretty boy!” Mike spat, loud enough for the entire class room to hear.

The blow came slower than Mike had expected, but when it did, he was prepared. He deflected most of the force with his elbow, and went to the floor, unmoving. Troy made as to kick Mike, put was put off balance by Lucas, who gave him a tackle any semi-pro footballer would be proud of.

“Hey! Cut it out!” The teachers shrill voice made them all stop. “You!” She looked at Troy. “Principal’s office, now!”. She made her way over to Mike as Troy left. “Mr. Wheeler? Mike? Can you get up?”. Mike just mumbled.

“All right. Henderson, take over. First, mark those in attendance, and then it’s pages 122 – 151.” Dustin looked scared, but nodded and started for the teacher’s desk.

“Sinclair, help me get your friend to the nurse.”

As Lucas and the teacher left Mike with the school nurse, he immediately put his head on her desk.

“Sorry.” He said. “My head hurts.” He looked up. “Where am I? This is not home.”

The nurse looked at Mike. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I, I don’t know.” Mike said. “I remember getting out the front door and getting on my bike, but after that, it’s blank.”

“Alright. That’s it. You are clearly suffering from a concussion. I’m taking you home.” The nurse grabbed her car keys. “Rest today and tomorrow. Take it easy over the weekend, no running around, absolutely no fighting, but not too much TV either. Your brain needs rest. On Monday morning, come here before first class and let me do a quick check up on you, okay?”

Mike had to put his head on the desk again to hide his smile.

\------------

The sound of Karen talking to the school nurse in the kitchen was muffled by the door to Mike’s room. El sat beside Mike’s bed and held his hand as he recounted what happened in school.

“What?! You think Troy is pretty?!” The look of utter disbelief on her face would probably have made anyone that was not Mike laugh.

“No, it’s, boy to boy, it can be used as an insult. I just wanted him to hit me.” Mike smiled and started to get up. “I only think you are pretty.”

El held him back with a hand to his chest. “She said lie down.” Now El smiled. “And I think you’re pretty lying there. So stay, please.” She lightly kissed his forehead.

They sat in silence for a while after that. They could hear the front door close as the nurse left.

“El.” Mike said. “Yesterday, when we talked to Dustin. What you said about your powers. I have to ask, do you really want them to be back?” He shot her a questioning look. “I mean, I guess once you turn 18, with them you could just walk into a casino and win at the roulette every time, and make as much money as you like. Or you could tell a magazine or TV network your story and be the world’s most famous person.”

El shook her head. “I don’t want to be on television. And I don’t want money.”

“Good. Because I thought about this all night. Maybe you are better off without your powers? If you don’t have them, the government have no use for you. They’ll leave you alone.”

“No.” El said. “They will never leave me alone. With or without powers. It’s not that either, it’s just, they’re part of me.” She thought for a second. “Remember, when I came back, and Dustin had teeth? But they were fake, and he stopped using them?” Mike nodded and El went on. “It’s like that, I want to be me.”

Mike nodded. He thought he knew what she meant. It was like him being a nerd. If he wanted to, he could stop playing role playing games and start watching sports, don a football jersey and forego his sweaters, stop raising his hand whenever the teacher asked a question, and after a while, he would probably find himself higher up in the school hierarchy. But he did not want to. Low social standing was a price he happily payed for getting to be himself.

“Okay. We’ll just have to find a way to bring them back.” He said.

“We?” She asked.

“Yeah. We. If you think I can be of any help. Speaking of help, there was another thing.”

“Yes?”

“So.” Mike started. “I think I know some things that can help you.”

“With my powers?”

“No. With that other thing we talked about yesterday. The dead, how you feel. It, it reminded me of Will, actually. He had to go on these long therapy sessions, like twice a week, that year you were gone.” He silenced. He didn’t like to think of that year. And he was afraid that bringing her trauma up would make her feel bad. Why could he never think first and speak later?

“Yes.” El said. “Did you help Will?”

“Not I really, but we talked a lot about what the doctors wanted him to do to feel better. He had all these brochures and stuff and I thought maybe, you can use that stuff too?”

“Hmm.” El looked at Mike, and he continued.

“So, there’s like two things that helps when you feel that way. And it’s talking and exercising.”

“Talking, and exercising?” Talking made some sense, she thought, she felt better after telling Mike everything yesterday.

“Yeah. The talking, it seems that just by telling someone who listens that you feel bad, you feel less bad. And the exercise, Will actually had a program he had to go through with different exercises, running, stuff like that. The brochures said that when you physically exhaust yourself, your brain makes a hormone that makes you happy.”

And that did make some sense too, El thought. When she ran, she did not think or feel, she just ran. Sometimes, it was as if time slowed and she floated, she didn’t even feel her feet touching the ground.

“I can’t help you with the exercise.” Mike smiled. “But with the talking, my parents give me some money, an allowance. And I could talk to them, and instead of me getting money you could use it to call me, when it’s really bad? It’s called a collect call…”

“But don’t you need the money?” El asked.

“Nah, I’d just waste it down at the arcade. I’d rather hear your voice.” Mike smiled. El kissed his forehead again. “Okay.” She said. “I’ll call. And talk.”

\-----------

The drive to Terre Haute was mostly done in silence. As El and Karen went to get El a ticket, Mike wandered off. “See you by the bus.” He said to El.

Mike arrived at El’s bus maybe five minutes after she did, and they got on together and found her a seat. Mike sat down next to her, and held her hand. They sat like that until the driver started the engine and closed the doors.

“Mike. Don’t you need to get off now?” El asked.

“Well.” Mike smiled. “My school don’t expect me back until Monday. And my dad gave me all this money and told me to make sure you get home safe, so I figured I’d do that.”

He took a ticket similar to El’s from his pocket. “And it seems it will take me almost eight hours to make sure you get to Detroit. I thought we might spend them kissing. Or talk, we could talk. Or be quiet. Or…”

“No.” El said. “I like kissing. I’ve missed kissing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done!
> 
> Anti-climatic, I know. But when you go for social realism, you have to account for that life is pretty anti-climatic most of the time. I tried to leave El in a better place than we found her, and hope to have delivered you a thought worth thinking or maybe a laugh along the way. Thanks for reading.
> 
> I mentioned in my introductory AN that I have spent a lot of time reading Mileven fics, and like to take this opportunity to mention those that inspired and impressed me the most. The world of Mileven fan fics are, IMHO, dominated by a few giants, but outside of those there are many stories very much worth a read.
> 
> Starting with the giants, there is no getting around that the best writer of Mileven fanfiction is Constantius. He is the master of emotions and of adventure, and what more do one look for in a Mileven tale? (don’t worry if you do, you’ll find humour, expanded lore, drama, ancient mazes, road trips and a thousand more things in his works). All told with a ridiculous high quality of writing. And the Mileven, so full of love! If Mileven fan fics was ancient literature, Constantius works would be the Odyssey and the Iliad, the works all others are compared to, yet no one equals. Outstanding work: When She was Special
> 
> If there is one writer who can compete for the title ‘best Mileven writer’, it is LBorealis, who writes action like no other. She weaves tales with clever plots and of the sweetest Mileven love, and always with great obstacles to overcome. Great writing, accompanied by Spotify playlists to get in the right mood for each story. Continuing the ancient literature parallel, she would be the one who told of Orpheus, whose love and music conquered even death to be with his Eurydike. Outstanding work: Full Circle
> 
> The fandom has it’s own Sappho (in ancient time known as The Poetess) as well in FateChica. She has made the long, dreamy slow-burn into it’s own art form. All told in a unique writing style that adds to the reading experience. If you are looking to float away on a semi-divine journey of Mileven love, look no further. Outstanding work: love you like a love song.
> 
> The writer with the greatest spread in themes among the great ones is kittenCorrosion. She is as good writing a heartfelt and personal tale of self-harm as she is writing an adventure tale of burning down the lab, or a first time story, a cute bookstore AU, a superhero AU, Christmas fluff, and so many more. And all of them good. It’s like the Mileven version of the Labours of Heracles, all different yet always masterfully executed. Outstanding work: Burn
> 
> Some other works I like to mention is the funniest Mileven story I’ve found (The Monk, by Tonbury) and if you feel like having a cup of tea and read the fluffiest of fluff, look no further than (Mike, Eleven and the quiet moments, by cali-chan (girls_are_weird)). Some amazing, original works are ('Cause we were just kids, by lovelysarcastic) which is a murder mystery and at the same time a sweet tale of getting past traumas, and (A Haunting in Hawkins, by she_who_the_river_could_not_hold) which depicts Mileven as a tear-jerking ghost story. The end all, be all High School AU is (Everybody Talks, by hannahberrie), with second place going to (Lights, Sound, Screwdriver!, by urdearestmom). I also must mention FanGirlingStrangerThings, who created an entire universe where Mileven is happy, however, my favourite by her is an AU where El escaped with Kali and live as an outlaw, but secretly loves Disney movies (Part of Your World, by FanGirlingStrangerThings). If you feel like reading something heavy and depressing, check out the For the Unknown-series, by ArtemisRae and Juxtaposie. And I must mention the writers DBSean, MonsterSquad (who also write very steamy stuff under the alias Magladin), milevenhearteyes, welcometotheupsidedown, EvieSmallwood and Jupiterstorm. And yes, I’ve only listed completed works.
> 
> I could mention more, but the above should last you a year at least. Did you not find your work on the list above, even though it deserves to be there? That is probably because I have not read it yet (try as I might I have not been able to read every story) let me know in the comments =)

**Author's Note:**

> So, after more than a year of reading, I figured I should contribute to the fandom as well.  
> I have tried for a story that has not been written before, and it's somewhat bleak. It will end well though =)
> 
> Not saying it could not happen this way, Joyce cares to much for Will, Jonathan is a grown-up and need to start his own life, and Will would love to follow his passion. Eleven is at her best when she overcomes a difficult situation. She is also my favourite character, so she had to be the centerpiece.


End file.
